The casement was open and the moonlight was white outside. She was conscious that the glare hurt her eyes, and that there was a strange stricture about her jaws and the base of her brain, like an iron hand.
It seemed to her but a minute that she stood there, but the dawn was breaking when there was a sudden confusion in the opposite room. She heard Colette's voice, and then George's, calling Lisa.
There was no answer.
Frances stood up, to listen. "Will she not speak?" she cried. "Make her speak!"
But in reality she said nothing. Even her breath had stopped to listen.
There was no answer.
Frances was awake now, for the rest of her life. She knew what she had done.
"Why, George," she said, "she cannot speak. She is dead. I did it."
She stood in the room a minute, looking from side to side, and then went with measured steps out of it, down the corridor and into the street.
"I did it," she said to herself again and again, as she walked slowly on.